Cynicism and Innocence
by VolcanicPizza
Summary: Like many Undertale fans, Winston and Joe just wanted to make the game's characters come to life. Unlike all the other fans, however, they succeeded. What they didn't realize was what the consequences would be, from their jaded brother Lee's reaction, to that of the characters, to the rest of the fandom. One thing's for certain: this timeline will be very, VERY, interesting...
1. Planning

**A/N: I've been seeing a fairly large amounts of (largely self-insert) fics recently where the overly genre-savvy protagonist makes the characters of Undertale come to life with the power of accidentally-exerted determination or through magic hackery. Usually, the world is overall overjoyed at the emergence of the characters and barely weirded out by it at all, and there's only a few people, who are unambiguously corrupt and evil, who try to use the monsters and end up getting curbstomped by either Sans, the self-insert, or Toby Fox himself.**

 **Therefore, I decided to write a deconstruction fanfic of these idealistic, wish-fulfillment stories, and to a lesser extent blatant self-insertion. I hope you enjoy!**

 **Warning: This fic will contain some mild language and potentially unreliable narrators. I can promise you, however, that it will _not_ contain OCs shipped with Sans, so that's something.**

* * *

 **AUGUST 1, 2017**

* * *

In hindsight, none of it would have happened if Lee hadn't introduced his younger brothers to the game Undertale.

He had thought it would appeal to their senses of humor and maybe teach them something about mercy, which Winston in particular was lacking. In this he had been proven correct, and Joe had been torn up about Asriel's fate for days afterwards. He was a sensitive kid, though, and he was only seven, so he could hardly be faulted.

Winston was a different case, though.

He'd played through a pacifist run, as his older brother had suggested. (He probably would have anyway, considering that he was still haunted by the memories of OFF and how it forced him to commit mass genocide.) Since Joe had never been any good at video games and was only seven anyway, Winston had let his younger brother watch over his shoulder as he played through the game.

And quite frankly, he hadn't seen what was so great about it.

The characters had been kind of exaggerated and contrived, the gameplay hadn't been the best, and the graphics were pretty terrible. (The soundtrack was great, though. There was no denying that.) Winston had left his first playthrough of Undertale dissatisfied, and had informed Lee of this.

And then Lee had suggested he reload from his last save, go back, and interact with the characters some more. Normally, Winston would have refused, but there was something about the expression in his brother's eyes and the tiny grin he was wearing that made him rethink that.

So Winston told Joe that he was going to play it again, since he thought he missed some stuff. Joe was ecstatic, of course, wanting to see more of his favorite character, Papyrus, and immediately started jumping all over the room like he usually did when he got drunk on his own excitement.

So the cynical eleven-year-old loaded his game and went back.

He was not disappointed. Most of the loose ends were tied up, the monsters were freed, and he finally had his suspicions about Flowey's identity confirmed. (Joe had been completely blindsided, though, having thought that Flowey was secretly a robot which Mettaton controlled for whatever reason he might have, and needed Winston to explain what was going on.)

And when Lee asked him if he was satisfied now, Winston had been surprised to find himself replying "yes."

And yet, he wouldn't settle for just one run. Especially not after what he'd seen online after investigating.

So with Joe watching over his shoulder the whole time, Winston performed a true reset and replayed the game, this time looking specifically for Easter eggs, secrets, and clues.

This time, he snooped in every corner, tried to get into every room, mucked about with reloading to see if the characters really did remember things, and actually read the entries in the True Lab instead of just skimming over them.

And again, he did not leave that run disappointed.

But he wanted more. More accurately, he wanted to mess with the files to see what would happen.

And so he did, again and again...

Right now, he was on his seventh reset, heading to the capital to fight Asgore again. This was also his seventh pacifist run- despite his cynicism on other matters, Winston had the integrity to not murder everything to see what would happen, and his curiosity on that matter was easily sated after a few hours on YouTube.

As Winston approached the amber judgement hall, he pondered what else he could try to change on this run. He didn't pay Sans any attention, merely hammering "Z" to skip the short skeleton' s speech- he had heard it enough already to have the judgement burned into his brain.

And then, as he started to direct Frisk out of the judgement hall, he had a thought, and reached up for the ESC key.

 **QUITTING...**

"What was that for?" complained Joe.

"I had an idea." Winston grinned ferally at his younger brother. "You know how some of the characters seem to know that this is a game, or at the very least seem, y'know, suspicious about it?"

"What about it?" Joe replied, an expression of sheer boredom on his face. Clearly he just wanted his older brother to get back to the game.

Winston clasped his hands together, struggling to resist the urge to chortle maniacally. "Well, what if we prove them right?"

"What do you mean?" asked Joe.

"What if we make Undertale real?" Winston suddenly felt unnaturally nervous, and shifted his glasses further up his nose.

Joe gave his older brother a patronising stare. "You can't do that in real life, dummy."

"I'm not talking about magicking them out of thin air or something," Winston retaliated, glaring back at his brother, "I mean we go into the code and try to code them a holographic body or something, and then get them to make themselves solid." He knew there were several logical leaps that he was making, but he also pretended that he didn't know that.

Joe opened his mouth to start to say something, and then closed it as a thoughtful expression drifted over his face. "That's actually a great idea!" he cheered. "How'd you come up with that?"

"It just... it just came to me." Actually, Winston had stolen the idea from an Undertale fanfic he'd read a few days back, but there was no way he was telling Joe that. "What do you say?"

"It sounds great!" cheered Joe. "I want to bring Papyrus back first so he can make me awesome armor too!"

"No." Winston replied. "We're doing Sans first."

Joe's overjoyed expression crumbled. "Wh-what? But... why?"

Normally Winston would have said something like "Because I say so and that's final," or "Because Sans is a badass, that's why," but judging by Joe's quivering lower lip he was on the verge of a tantrum, and so instead he supplied, "Because he's shorter and it'll be easier to project him. Also, since he knows about timelines and stuff, he'll be able to help us out."

Joe nodded slowly, but reluctantly. "Alright, fine." he pouted. "But we're doing Papyrus right afterwards."

 _I doubt Sans would let us get away with anything else,_ Winston thought, but on the outside he merely nodded.

* * *

Hesitantly Winston knocked on Lee's door. He heard a frantic scuffling of papers from inside, and then the sound of a sleep-deprived teenager tripping and falling to the ground. Several muffled family-unfriendly words could be heard from inside, but they weren't any Winston didn't already know.

With an exaggerated creak, the oaken door swung open. Standing in the doorway was a fairly tall teenager with mussed brownish hair and heavily smudged glasses. He was wearing a heavily broken-in metallic blue hoodie with an irregular black X marked in Sharpie over the left side of its chest. For a moment he blinked, staring at Winston without really processing, before snarling, "What is it? I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"Well, aren't you just a little ball of sunshine today." Winston muttered sarcastically.

"I don't get paid to be polite." Lee responded, narrowing his eyes at his younger brother.

Raising an eyebrow, Winston commented, "I didn't know you got paid for anything."

"I don't." Lee confirmed. "What is it? If it's a phone call for me, tell 'em to piss off, and if Mom wants me to take out the garbage or something, it can wait till I'm done this."

"Actually," Winston said, "I wanted to know if you still had that huge coding book- y'know, the one that would've crushed Joe's head last year when you dropped it if he hadn't dodged."

"Thank you for specifying." Lee snarked. "Otherwise I would have been confused as to which of the several hundred large coding books which are in my possession which you are referring to."

Winston sighed. "Look, you don't have to be a prick about it. Do you have it or not?"

"Yes," Lee replied, apparently unfazed by his younger brother's comment, "but what're you gonna use it for?"

For a moment Winston was about to tell Lee about his insane plan to bring the characters of Undertale to life, but then his more rational side took over and reminded him that, with his current attitude, Lee would probably slowly and agonizingly point out every way in which their plan would fail before refusing, and so he found himself saying instead, "I'm gonna hack the FBI."

Lee blinked slowly before turning to his bookshelf and yanking the aforementioned book from his shelf. Carefully, he set the book in Winston's arms, and with a gasp the eleven-year-old nearly buckled under its weight.

"Have fun," Lee said detachedly, turning to his cluttered, paper-covered desk.

"So, just to confirm," Winston gasped, making his way to the door, "which mask are you wearing today? The 'edgy prick' one or the 'I'm too busy to be polite' one?"

Turning his head back to his brother with a blank expression, Lee replied, "Perhaps it's neither."

And with that enigmatic answer, he shoved Winston out of the room and closed the door behind him.

 **A/N: I've got a question for you guys. Do you want me to realistically show all the effort they'd need to put in to make this a reality, or would you prefer for me to sacrifice realism for not boring the audience?**


	2. Pixels and Projections

**A/N: I've recently noticed that I have a tendency to horribly screw over my OCs fate-wise, although I admit I'm not quite sure why. Regardless, I'm probably going to try to avoid that in this fic, if for no other reason than that I'm trying to write it as a counter to the darkness of my other main Undertale fic series _Anomaly Cycle_. **

**(Of course, don't take that to mean that this'll all be butterflies and sunshine. I know how effed up the fandom can get, and the word _Cynicism_ is in the title for a reason.)**

* * *

 **AUGUST 1, 2017**

* * *

Joe sat on the edge of his older brother's bed, idly drumming his fingers along the wooden frame. He had tried to help with the coding, but after he had accidentally deleted several lines of code, Winston had started making his "I'm going to throw you out the window" face. Thus, wishing to avoid defenestration, the seven-year-old had determined to give himself a new assignment, which was to sit quietly and do nothing.

Despite not annoying Winston, however, doing nothing had the one major downside of being boring, and regarding his age Joe was even more vulnerable to boredom's clutches.

Winston was lying on his stomach on the carpet, laptop in front of him and the massive coding book to his side, opened to a page full of big words and strings of code. Joe had a larger vocabulary than most of his peers, one close to Winston's in fact, but even he had no idea what half of the text said.

"I'm boooooored," whined Joe, scuffing his heels against the already-scarred bedframe.

To his annoyance, Winston barely gave him a side glance. "Good for you."

"Did you even hear what I said?"

Winston didn't even bother to respond as he reached to his side to flip to the index, several hundred pages falling to the side and slamming into the cover. (Joe hadn't even known paper could make that kind of sound.) After a moment or two, he said, in a distracted tone, "If you want to be useful, keep being quiet."

With an annoyed sigh, Joe left the room. Winston's right eye followed him while his left stayed trained on the computer, but besides that he made no move to alter his brother's course.

* * *

Being a somewhat young child and easily distracted, it was several hours before Joe returned. When he did, he was surprised to see Winston messing with, of all things, MS Paint. "I thought you hated Paint!" exclaimed the former with no small surprise.

"It's the best thing we've got for spritework." replied Winston.

"Uh, what?" Joe scratched his head, thoroughly lost.

"I've got a plan." Winston explained, turning the computer for Joe to see what appeared to be a sprite of Frisk with a few pixels added to its height. "If we're gonna bring them to life, it's better if they get to know us rather than a generic yellow humanoid."

Unsure if that was racist, Joe watched as his brother pulled up a photograph of himself and copied his skin color onto Frisk. Deftly he erased their squinting eyes and replaced them with two vertical lines. Frowning, he shifted the left eye over a pixel before moving onto Frisk's shirt.

"Why are you making Frisk look like you?" asked Joe, brow furrowed.

"Fair enough, and I'll tell you." Altering Frisk's shirt to match his black hoodie, Winston continued, "It's because I'm gonna be Frisk. And you too, I guess." he added as an afterthought.

Joe still didn't understand what his brother was saying, which was vaguely humiliating. "Can you stop being so vague?" he demanded.

"They need to recognize us as not being enemies, okay?" Winston sighed. "So in order to do that, I'm gonna mod the game to have sprites of us instead of Frisk. Not sure how I'll mod the controls, but that's not important right now. Point is, we're gonna make sure they know us as us instead of Frisk, so that way when we drag them out of the game we'll all already be best buds. I don't want to reset, though, so I guess I'll just muck with the coding for their memories."

"That makes sense." Joe tapped the computer screen. "Can I make my own instead of you doing it for me?"

"That depends." Winston raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to be able to get the correct pixel size ratio so the sprite doesn't look off?"

"What?"

"Exactly."

Joe plopped down next to his brother and stared at the screen blankly. Neither of them said anything, and in the long run that was probably for the best.

* * *

Much later, two pixellated humanoids stood in an equally pixellated hallway, staring at a pixellated skeleton.

As he had said he would earlier, Winston had altered the coding, and with it everyone's memories, to remember two humans. He had also erased Toriel's memory of him calling her "mom"- no sense in doing so if it meant she wasn't going to be their mom in real life.

The two children's sprites were standing in the judgement hall. After some trial and error, Winston had procured a joystick for Joe to make things easier, and so far it seemed to be working. Winston was using the arrow keys, as always.

Sans finally spoke. "So you have finally arrived."

 _Course we have!_ thought Winston sarcastically. _We know that, you fool!_

The skeleton continued, "The end of your journeys are at hand. Soon you will face King Asgore... and... well, the end result won't be pleasant either way."

Winston pulled up the text box from the bottom of the screen and typed a response: **What if we don't continue to the end of the game, and we just pull you out of the game and put you into real life?**

The skeleton's shadowed sprite didn't move. "What... What do you mean by that? You... What?"

Winston was grinning maniacally as he typed again. **I said what I meant and I meant what I said.**

Joe felt himself growing nervous. "Uh, Winston, are you sure this..."

"Shush. I don't wanna mess this up."

Had either brother been wiser, or had Sans's facial expressions been visible, they would have realized that they were far, far past the point of messing up, but unfortunately that was not the case.

* * *

Whatever Sans had been expecting, it hadn't been this.

First, two humans had fallen. Humans who, for some reason, had grown kind of fuzzy in his memory. And now... what were they even talking about about? Taking him out of the game? _What the hell were they going on about?_

The taller human spoke again, face hidden in shadow, voice blank and devoid of emotion. "All this is just a game. None of this is real. And we sure don't know for sure what'll happen if you stay here. But if we pull you into the real world... the true world... then you can have an actual life. You can see the real stars. Everything will be wonderful."

Sans could barely comprehend what was happening. "This... isn't real?"

And yet, he had always had a sneaking suspicion, hadn't he? Distant echoes, weirdly anachronistic déjà vu... why couldn't those be signs that what this kid was saying was true? And didn't terms like "reset" sound like something that would better fit into a video game than real life?

And yet... he couldn't trust them.

He couldn't trust what they said.

"You're the Anomaly, aren't you?" Sans tried, doing his best to hide his growing, seething rage.

"An anomaly offering you a chance at true freedom." retorted the child. "If you won't accept our offer, we will simply find someone more willing to listen."

Perhaps they didn't mean it as menacingly as it sounded, but Sans only needed one second to flash to a panicked conclusion: _Papyrus!_

 _They're gonna go after Papyrus next, if they don't get me to agree._ Sans realized, rage replaced by horror. _Better for them to get me than him._

"Alright!" he cried out, hoping desperately that he didn't sound too frantic. "I'm in!"

* * *

Winston laughed quietly. "Alright, finally! Joe, pull up the 3D model I made and click the little gray button labeled 'Transfer' with that button on the top of the joystick. I'm gonna fix the projector up." With multiple exaggerated grunting noises, he began turning the oversized projector to point at the blank corner of his wall. He could hear Joe clicking around behind him, but ignored him. _If I mess up the projector angle, Sans could have his proportions horribly skewed. This has only a small chance of working anyway, and I can't let that chance grow any smaller!_

Sudden panic gripped him. _What if we mess this up? Assuming Sans even survived, he'd sure as hell never trust us again, and he'd do everything in his power to ensure we couldn't pull anyone else out, even if we'd figured out what went wrong._

 _Well, too late to go back now!_ With a gentle tap, Winston set the projector running, casting its vague white beam upon the wall. "All systems go?" he called.

"It's got the little loading bar, so yeah?" Joe replied.

"Okay." A burst of exhilaration washed over Winston. "It's go time." In truth, he had no idea what 'go time' was, but it sounded really cool and he'd be damned if he passed up the chance to say it now.

The projector whirred, and the image of the skeleton began to appear against the wall.

"He, uh, looks kind of flat." Joe noted.

Winston waved a hand dismissively. "Wait for the resolution to get better."

Colors began to saturate, slowly growing less and less faded. The floating, glowing pinpricks in Sans's eyesockets began to appear, burning bright in stark contrast to the off-white of the skeleton's bones.

And then, with an anticlimactic rippling effect, it was over, and a projection of Sans the skeleton stood propped up against the wall with a slightly dazed expression.

"Did it work?" Joe was positively beaming, and tiny bursts of laughter kept escaping him. "Did it? Did it? Did it?"

Winston wanted to believe. He desperately wanted to believe that the procedure had worked properly, that he truly had brought Sans to life and that everything would be lovely again.

But instead, he found himself shuffling over to the skeleton and carefully examining the projection, ensuring not to block the beam. (He didn't know what would happen if he did, but if he had to take a wild guess, it wouldn't be good.) "How are you feeling, Sans?" he asked in a businesslike tone. "Missing any vital parts?"

"I feel... kind of... flat... and empty..." Sans's voice was raspy, and more high-pitched than fanon would have led Winston to believe. "What... did you do to me...?"

Winston's eyes widened, and he collapsed into maniacal laughter. "It worked! It worked! _It actually effing worked!_ YEEEEESSSS!" he exalted, stretching his hands to each side and raising his head to the heavens.

"What... the hell... did you... do to me?" the skeleton managed, carefully flexing his phalanges. "I can't... feel... anything..."

"Oh, right." Winston waved a hand in the air. "You've got magic, and unless something went grievously wrong you should still have it. Just use that and solidify your body... but make sure you keep your clothing separately formed so it doesn't melt into you." he added as an afterthought.

"How do you expect me to do _any_ of that?" snarled Sans, finally seeming to have caught his breath. "Magic doesn't work that way! I'd need an immense amount of energy, likely several thousand times what it takes to summon a few hundred magical bones, and I'd need to know how to do solidifying magic or whatever you'd call it... _which I don't._ "

Silence reigned in the room for several moments. Surprisingly, it was Joe who broke it, with a melancholy "We didn't really think this through well, did we?"

"Shush, Penfold." snapped his brother, beginning to pace about the room. "We can fix this," he muttered, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself than anything else. "We just need to look at it from the right angle."

Having let Winston abdicate, silence instilled itself as the sole supreme monarch of the room once again. And none of the three in the room- humans and monster- dared break its rule, for fear of what might succeed it.


	3. Underwhelming Reality

**AUGUST 1, 2017**

* * *

The ostensible "real surface" was somewhat underwhelming, Sans thought bitterly. Instead of being able to walk around with his friends, watch the sun on its course through the sky, breathe fresh air, he'd been trapped in this room for the past hour, cemented in place by the projector which sustained his life, while these two kids- Winston and Joe, he'd gathered their names were- prattled on excitedly and ran around the room tripping over each other and coming up with new ideas which they almost instantly discarded. Now, though, the chaos seemed to have died down, with Joe sitting on the bed and Winston, for some reason, was digging through his shorts drawer.

"What're you doing?" Sans asked Winston gruffly.

The eleven-year-old had his face stuffed into his shorts drawer, and at that he let his head up and said, "Looking for a book."

"Novel idea," quipped the skeleton, "but how's that supposed to help with this?"

"Alright, well, don't freak out, but it's a book about black magic."

"That got dark quickly." commented Joe.

"What?" Sans forced his voice to a more temperate tone. "Are you attempting to tell me that you're going to use-"

"Here we go!" Winston grinned, tugging the book out from under a pair of gray shorts. "I stole this from one of my friends and hid it here so Mom and Dad wouldn't find it." he added proudly. "Now, let's see here..." he muttered, flipping the pages rapidly.

"No!" Sans snarled. "I'm not having you do some arcane satanic thing just to give me a physical body!"

"It's this or nothing!" retorted Winston.

"I'd prefer nothing over _that!"_

"Fine, then!" With a frustrated exhalation, Winston tossed a pair of shorts over his shoulder in the skeleton's general direction. "That's-"

And then he stopped.

A low humming noise was emitting from the projector.

Winston turned around in quiet shock to see his discarded shorts floating in front of the projection.

"What the hell did you do?" Sans's voice shook with fear, and the outline of his body began glitching and shaking back and forth.

"I don't know!" Winston stared in horror.

With an anticlimactic rippling, the shorts increased in size and began fading, growing darker, as they drifted towards Sans. They touched the projection quietly and seemed to drift through the monster, slowly conforming to the precise shape of his projected shorts.

And then the two merged suddenly with a small pop, and the shorts Sans was wearing reverted to how they had been, the only difference being that they seemed almost substantial, corporeal.

"What just happened?" Joe asked confusedly.

Winston crept towards Sans and hesitantly poked at the side of his shorts. "I think," he said, turning to Joe with a maniacal grin, "we've found a solution."

* * *

Winston's theory had proven to be correct, as an old hoodie of Lee's which he'd grown out of and a set of tattered sneakers had grown to fit Sans almost perfectly. (Joe had been disappointed that Sans didn't actually wear pink slippers, but Winston reveled in the nature of everything seeming to be one big "take that" towards fanon.)

The only problem was Sans's actual skeleton, but Winston's face had lit up as he said that he had an idea and he went dashing off down the hallway, leaving Joe to supervise the skeleton.

Which Sans was not pleased with.

"Can you make your eye glow?" asked Joe eagerly, bouncing on his toes.

Normally Sans would have wondered how he knew that, but considering that he was ostensibly a character from a video game he didn't comment on that, instead merely saying, "No."

"Why not?" pouted the child.

"I can't just light it up on command." Sans replied, wishing the kid would just be quiet already.

"Yes, you can!" exclaimed Joe. "You do it all the time in those comics and animations Winston showed me!"

"I believe I've explained the concept of 'fanon' to you before," came a voice from the doorway, and Sans turned grateful eyelights towards Winston, who was dragging something large behind him. "Anyway," continued the child, "this is what I went running off for." With a malevolent grin, he pulled an off-white skeleton model from behind him and stood it next to Sans. Their heights were almost identical.

Explanations were clearly in order. Having no eyebrows to raise, Sans merely asked, "Where'd you get this?"

"Dad bought it on Halloween a few years back because he wanted a glowy skeleton on the porch for whatever reason, but he couldn't figure out how to put the light bulbs in it and chucked it into the attic." Winston replied, spinning the figure around to reveal a trailing power cord on the back. "Just lemme cut this off and we'll be good to go."

"You sure they won't notice it gone?" asked Joe worriedly.

"Course not," replied Winston as he slashed the blade of a Bowie knife through the cord an inch from the spine. "It's been almost a year and they still haven't noticed that I took this sweet knife."

Sans had no response to that.

* * *

"This might hurt." cautioned Winston as he carefully slid the model skeleton through the top of Sans's hoodie.

"I'm fine," said Sans, though the expression on his face made it clear that nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Suddenly, the plastic model skeleton ripped itself from Winston's hands and fused itself into Sans's body, almost seeming to melt itself into him. The skeleton's eyelights went out, and he let out a quiet, muffled screaming noise.

And then it was suddenly over, and the projector flickered off, with Sans dropping to the floor, dazed.

"Are you alright?" Winston asked in concern, reaching out to help the skeletal monster up and suppressing a small burst of euphoria as he realized that his plan had succeeded and that Sans was, in fact, now fully corporeal.

"I... think so." Sans regained his footing and reached out an arm, supporting himself against the wall.

"You sure?" Winston asked.

Sans nodded hesitantly. "I think... I'd like to go outside and see the sun."

"No problem!" Winston grinned, turning to open the door...

...and doing so only to find Lee standing immediately outside in the hallway.

"What the hell's going on in here?"

* * *

 **A/N: I need you guys to help me with something. Are you fine with me setting this in our timeline at the risk of potentially offending some people, or would you prefer I set it in a completely alternate timeline which just happens to also have a man named Toby Fox who made a game called Undertale? Please advise me on this matter, because I genuinely have no idea which is the better route to take.**


	4. Trap of Your Own Design

Papyrus was concerned.

It had been several hours since Sans had left, and he still hadn't come back. He didn't even call to tell Papyrus that he was okay or anything.

 _It was almost like, co_ nsidered the tall skeleton, _Sans had vanished from the Underground entirely._

But that wasn't possible, not with the Barrier still standing.

Was it?

Papyrus took a brief glance at Undyne, who was standing next to him. She didn't seem at all concerned, but then again did she even know? Had she even noticed?

 _Would anyone other than me notice if Sans had vanished for a day? A week? A month?_

 _Forever?_

Papyrus suddenly felt himself trembling, and he collapsed into the snow in front of his and Sans's house on his knees. He pulled his phone out, but fumbled it through his gloves, and it dropped into the snow. The skeleton stared at it detachedly for a moment before pulling himself together. _You know how Sans is. He's probably just off somewhere I didn't look. I didn't check his illegal hot dog stand, he's probably there entertaining the humans or stacking food on their heads! Yeah! That's what he's doing!_

"Papyrus?" Undyne asked, but her voice sounded as though it came from a distance. "Are you okay?"

"I..." Papyrus had to force the words out. "IT'S SANS. HE HAS BEEN MISSING FOR AN ABNORMALLY LONG AMOUNT OF TIME, AND... WELL, I AM CONCERNED."

"Well, if that's the case," replied Undyne, raising the eyebrow above her missing eye, "why don't you call him?"

"I... YES. THAT IS, I WAS JUST ABOUT TO CALL HIM." Fearing the worst, Papyrus picked up the cell phone and slowly lowered his fingers to the screen.

* * *

Lee's eyes opened wide in disbelief and fear as he stared at Sans, whose hoodie was hanging open, clearly showing his ribcage and the white soul floating within.

"You... how..." The words almost seemed like they had to force themselves from Lee's mouth as he crossed the room and yanked open Winston's laptop. Fingers gripping the screen, he stared at the 3D model of Sans momentarily, comparing it to the real thing standing there before shoving the window to the side and scanning the lines of code next to it. "Why, you clever little..." he muttered as he closed the laptop and turned around. "So that's what you needed the coding book for."

Lee stood there silently for several moments, seemingly collecting his thoughts, before finally saying, "Now, enlighten me as to whether I have inferred the events catalyzed by my granting you this weighty tome correctly, or serve to correct me and inform me that I have merely grouped together a set of coincidences in the same frame and drawn hasty conclusions in a vein similar to that of the deranged megalomaniacs known as conspiracy theorists."

Had Winston not been partially drunk on the glory of managing to bring Sans out of the game and into the real world and remembered that Lee tended to wax overly eloquent and loquacious when he was angry, he would have responded in less of an egotistical manner. As was, he did not, and proudly proclaimed, "We managed to pull Sans out of the game and into real life!"

"Yeah!" Joe added enthusiastically. "We used Dad's old projector and then somehow put stuff into him and he came to life!"

Lee's eyes drifted over to Sans, who was clearly unsure of whether the teenager could be trusted, and settled on giving him a neutral nod and a "Sup."

That seemed to settle Lee's belief more than anything, as Winston could hear him momentarily muttering, "...not like fanon at all..." He slowly turned to the window with his eyes closed and opened his mouth to say something. Before he could, however, Sans asked, "Who are you, anyway?"

Clearly Lee had not expected to be interrupted, with his facial expression clearly demonstrating this. With a tiny nod, he replied, "Ah. Forgive me for my rudeness. I am Lee Hardison, the older brother of Winston and Joe here." Attempting to get back on track, Lee took a deep breath and asked, "Now, which one of you abysmally clever children took the mental initiative to pioneer this conjured crusade of yours?"

"Me!" Winston replied proudly.

"I see." Suddenly Lee's expression slipped into a distorted expression of rage as he spun around, seizing Winston's shirt in his fist as he howled, "YOU IDIOTS!"

Winston froze, and for just a second he was genuinely terrified of his brother.

"Hey, back off." Sans's eyelights had gone out. "What're you so angry for? You've seen this game they claim I'm from, haven't ya?"

Lee laughed, sounding slightly insane, as he lashed out a trembling finger at Sans, stopping just before hitting him. "Out of everyone in the entire Underground, it's you who I'd expect most to understand, Sans the Judge! Sure, my family is nice, but you're in for a shock if you expect the world outside to be the same!"

"What do you mean?"

Lee's twisted expression seemed to be stuck between utter anguish and jovial horror. "Oh, let me tell you exactly what I mean-"

And then Winston's computer pinged.

"What the hell is it?" snarled Lee.

Winston scurried over to the computer and clicked into the Undertale window. "There's... Sans, do you have your phone on you right now?' he asked with a furrowed brow.

Sans dug a hand into his pocket, and after some fumbling pulled out a cell phone. "That's weird. The hoodie you kids merged into this didn't have anything in its pockets."

"Someone's... Papyrus is trying to call you." Joe piped up.

"Well, put him through!" Sans snapped.

Winston opened up the coding book and started to type, but Lee shoved him aside. "Let me do this." With a few quick keystrokes, he pulled up a second menu and selected _Patch._

The projector turned on again with a soft whir, and a thin beam of yellow light emitted from the lens and connected with Sans's phone, which started to play a stock ringtone.

"What can I say?" asked Sans in response to the stares from the younger siblings. "I'm too lazy to change it." He tapped the screen and brought the phone to the side of his skull. "Hey, bro."

* * *

Papyrus sighed in relief as Sans's voice crackled through the reciever. "SANS, WHERE ARE YOU?" he asked worriedly, frowning as he noticed another thing. "AND WHEREVER YOU ARE, WHY IS THE RECEPTION SO BAD? ARE YOU NEAR THE CORE?"

"Uh... no." Sans replied after a short hesitation. "I'm... on the surface. Sort of."

"Wait, what?" Undyne shouted, having barely caught what he said. "Papyrus, put it on speaker."

"SURE." Papyrus tried to tap the button, but missed. He was shaking even more now, mind swarming with too many questions to answer in fifty years, but nevertheless he managed to press it the second time before bringing it back up to his skull and asking in a trembling voice, "HOW ARE YOU ON THE SURFACE? DID ONE OF THE HUMANS GIVE YOU THEIR SOUL?"

"Not quite." the short skeleton replied. "I mean, yeah, they did help me get out, but not like that." Something crashed to the ground on the other end, and multiple voices started yelling all at once. Sans began speaking much more quickly. "Their older brother just came in, and he's really angry, though I don't know why. Papyrus, you're gonna have to call me back, but I promise, I'll explain everything then, and I'll get you and everyone else to the surface. Just give me-"

The call abruptly cut out.

"We need to tell Asgore about this." Undyne said quietly, but Papyrus made no effort to say anything.

* * *

"What the-" Sans smacked the side of his cell phone in anger as the yellow light dissipated. "Damn! The call dropped!"

"Well, that frickin' tears it." Lee sighed, dropping backwards and sitting on his brother's bed, all his anger seeming to deflate at once. "This is a completely different timeline from yours, Sans, so you probably have no idea what to expect from the surface world asides from what you've garnered from my little, uh, outburst." Steepling his fingers and affixing his melancholy stare on Sans, he continued, "So let me take the role of Captain Exposition for just a few minutes and tell you PRECISELY why my little brothers just effed up the most they ever have in their lives and probably doomed monsters to annihilation."

* * *

 **A/N: Currently, the votes for whether this fic is set in our timeline or another one are skewed in favor of the former. This is your last chance if you want to change that and haven't voted yet or if you've changed your mind and want to change your vote either way.**


	5. The Least Obvious Choice

**A/N: As a compromise on the "setting this in a different timeline" question, I've decided that this is set in a world similar to ours, but with a few changes. Some of them will be revealed later on, but here's a few which shouldn't spoil anything about the plot:**

 **1\. I never wrote this fanfic.**

 **2\. Less people subscribe to the "red SOUL is determination" theory, with a schism having formed earlier on due to multiple people having argued that DT is yellow and the red soul is a different trait, and as a result more fanworks use the yellow-DT theory.**

 **3\. Most importantly out of all of these,** **Aaron Mullins (you may know him better as FelixTheJudge) survived the car crash that killed him in our timeline on March 4, 2017, and remains alive to this day none the worse for wear.**

 **And finally, I've settled on a time for this fic to be set in. Each chapter will have a note above it detailing the day unless it doesn't apply due to a scene in the game, and I've gone back and added those notes to other chapters.**

 **Apologies for the excessively-long author's note which I'm only making longer by adding this apology.**

* * *

 **AUGUST 1, 2017**

* * *

"What do you mean?" asked Sans. "Surely the humans feel sympathetic towards us if we're, you know, in a video game and everything."

"Yeah, well, there's over seven billion people on the planet's surface right now, and I doubt that even a few million of have actually played it." Lee replied. "Sure, it's a cult game, but so many people misinterpret Undertale and pretend they've played it when it's blatantly clear that they haven't that I doubt anyone truly understands the game anymore."

"Examples, please." Sans's eyesockets narrowed.

"Here's one: people have you with a magical glowy eye for just about everything-" Lee gestured at his own eye. "-when your eye only glows for about ten seconds split up over a twenty-minute fight. Come to think of it," added the teenager, "the entire damn genocide route is overused to hell and back when it's the least satisfying run of the game. I'd know- I tried one myself after all my friends kept pressuring me to do one." He was talking more quickly, almost frantically, now, ignoring Sans's hollow, blank eyesockets. "I felt like a terrible person the whole way through, but I kept going because I shoved it aside-"

"Stop." Sans held up a hand. "Genocide? And the point of this 'run' is?"

"Killing everything just to see what happens..."

Winston was never sure what happened afterwards. All he knew was that everything suddenly went black, like the world had been blotted out, and when it became normal again Sans was standing in front of Lee with a slightly subdued expression.

"Calm down. Jeez." Sans shuffled away from the teenager. "Ya coulda just told me that you hacked straight to my fight to avoid killing Papyrus and I wouldn't've had to do that."

"Well, you weren't exactly in a position to be reasoned with." retorted Lee. "Doubt you'd have listened to me anyway."

"What just happened?" asked Winston and Joe almost simultaneously.

"Nothing to concern yourselves with." Lee swiped his hand against the jagged X on his hoodie in an irritated gesture.

"Sans paused time to chew you out like he does in Grillby's to talk about echo flowers, didn't he?"

"I still shamelessly quit genocide anyway!"

"Alright, calm down." Sans raised his hands in the air, eyelights back to a stable glow. "I can see that there might be a few humans who try to kill everyone in real life, but what does that have to do with everyone else?"

Lee shook his head. "I'd explain, but it'd be much easier to just let you browse the internet for a few minutes. Try using the phrases 'Middle East,' 'ISIS,' 'Nazi,' and 'Undertale fanart.'" Silently he pulled up Chrome on Winston's computer and handed the laptop to Sans, turning the screen out of the view of his younger brothers.

Shortly, Sans's face suddenly contorted, eyelights going out, and Lee looked over his shoulder and tutted. "That's not how you spell 'Undertale,' Sans."

* * *

After directing Sans away from Lee's ill-advised keyword, he got to reading through some current news articles, from a variety of sources as Lee had advised in order to eliminate any bias.

Regardless, fifteen minutes had passed and Winston and Joe were just starting to get bored when Sans abruptly shut the laptop lid. "I've seen enough," he said in a quiet voice that seemed almost on the verge of panic.

"Understand what I'm talking about now?" asked Lee, voice somber.

Sans nodded, remaining silent for a few seconds until finally saying "How? I... I knew humans weren't the best species, otherwise they wouldn't have sealed us underground, but..." He let his voice trail off.

"Not everyone's a good person," Winston piped up, "but we'll figure out a way to make things better!"

"The easiest solution would be to stuff Sans back into the game right now and just pretend none of this ever happened, but I have no clue how we'd do that, if it's even possible." Lee glanced over at Sans, who was wearing a carefully neutral expression. "As is, odds are that he's not letting us go unless we bring Papyrus back as well, and because Papyrus is... well, Papyrus... he'll immediately insist that his friends who were left behind join him, and then they'll make us bring everyone we left behind into reality, and so on... BUGGER!" Lee burst out. "Why couldn't you two just be idiots who don't even know where the space bar is?! It's not that difficult!"

Neither Winston nor Joe knew how to respond to this.

"Fine." Lee clenched his teeth. "Get to work bringing Papyrus back. I'll be in my room trying to figure out the politics of introducing a bunch of video game characters to the world without tearing the world apart." Brushing his fingers against the X on his hoodie, he left the room.

* * *

 **A/N: In case anyone's wondering, the jagged X on Lee's hoodie was put on intentionally by him, and he has a similar mark placed on the gray duster which he wears almost all the time in colder weather.**

 **Also, I have no idea where I should make the main characters live. I've been writing as though they live in** **North America, probably somewhere in the northern US or Canada, so if anyone's got any suggestions that'd be greatly appreciated.**


	6. For Nought

**A/N: I'm sorry about how long this chapter took to come out. Despite having most of the future plot planned out, the specifics of this chapter eluded me, and so it was stuck in the fanfic equivalent of development hell.**

 **I apologize if this seems subpar, but after all this time I just wanted to get something out.**

* * *

 **AUGUST 1, 2017**

Eating dinner that night was more strange than words could describe, especially considering that in Winston's room, separated from the kitchen by only a ceiling and floor, a lazy skeleton clad in a blue hoodie was attempting to figure out how to bring his brother into the real world. Lee was probably somewhere up there too, considering that he'd shoveled his food into his mouth at easily twice the rate he normally did before bolting up to his room, presumably to attempt to figure out how to introduce monsters that up to today had been fictional characters to the world.

"You've been upstairs an awful lot today, Winston." noted his father, scraping his fork idly across his plate and dragging the sad remnants of his mashed potatoes with it. "What've you been doing?"

"Uh... nothing." replied Winston evasively.

"Nothing, my foot." muttered his mom, glancing at her son. "You were wasting your whole day on the internet again, weren't you?"

 _If only I could tell them what we've been up to..._ Winston shoved his plate forward and rose to his feet. "May I be excused?" he asked. As his dad's head twitched in what he presumed to be a nod, he turned on his heel and dashed from the room.

"What's he in a hurry for?" Joe asked his fork. "It's not like he's going to be able to help Lee blow up the staircase in case of zombies after the fire department came last time."

"You know nothing about that, you weren't even born then!" came a shout from the staircase.

* * *

As Winston approached Lee's room, he could hear a voice that definitely wasn't Lee's from inside the room. But it wasn't Sans's voice, either.

It was the voice of an elderly man, speaking quietly. Pausing outside the door, Winston heard the man say, "My mum said 'I'm gonna wet myself.' I put up my hand. 'Yes?' said the inspector. 'Queen Juliana is a _fat banana_.'"

Winston carefully opened the door. "Slacking on the job, eh?" he asked.

The response from Lee was immediate, as with a startled grunt he slammed the laptop lid shut. "I needed a break, alright?" he asked.

"And so you decided to watch Michael Rosen videos. What a constructive use of your so-called break."

"I like political stuff, but it does get boring after a while." Lee stood up, pushing his swivel chair to the wall, and picked his way through the papers on the floor over to his brother. "Why are you here?"

"I just wanted to check in quick before getting back to work on Papyrus. What progress have you made?" Winston drummed his fingers on the inside of the doorway.

Lee sighed and shrugged. "Assimilation is going to be harder than I thought. Though fellow Undertale fans might help out, there are plenty of... questionable ones that might demand... certain services in return for their aid, most likely relating to the character you two brought out first."

Winston knew exactly what his brother was implying there. "What about everyone else?"

"They're wild cards, really. A lot of them hate a few characters with a fiery, burning anger and love everyone else, and while some of them might be able to get over their hatred I suspect murder attempts will happen."

"Oh..."

"I also looked briefly into getting the monsters some land for their new state, and the prospects there don't look so good." Lee turned to walk back to his computer, and Winston did his best to follow him. "The disputed land in the Middle East is obviously out, and there's no way any major country would help us by giving up some of their own land unless we gave them an obscene amount of gold. Even then it'd probably be about half the size of Rhode Island. The best I can think of is that we have the monsters help to take out North Korea with magic and stuff and we might get some land for their trouble, but that also risks antagonizing China."

"What if we take over Poland?" suggested Winston. "Poland's a nice country that's really easy to conquer."

"Really." Lee gave his brother a patronizing stare. "And how, exactly, do you know this? Personal experience?"

"Well, last time I got redirected to Tv Tropes and ended up spending half an hour on that damn site, one of the tropes I remember seeing was called 'Music to Conquer Poland To' or something like that." Winston responded, glaring back at his brother. "That would imply that Poland is easy to conquer, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe, but Poland is a nice, peaceful country, and its inhabitants don't deserve to be screwed over any more than they already have been over the centuries. Besides, as I recall Poland's in both the EU and NATO. You want the EU and NATO up our ass because you thought that taking advice from Tv Tropes was a good idea? Is that it?"

Winston had absolutely no response to that, mainly because he was still trying to figure out how their argument had gotten to that point. After a few moments of stumbling around in his mind, he decided that the only way to salvage his sanity would be to throw up his hands and leave, which he did. "I'm going to work some more on bringing Papyrus back." he called over his shoulder as he left.

"You do that." For some reason, Lee was watching him as he left.

* * *

"UNDYNE! WAIT UP!" Despite his only slightly subdued enthusiasm at the beginning of their trek to the capital, Papyrus was not in the best condition, what with his bones aching and a throbbing migraine in his skull.

The two monsters were currently running towards Asgore's gardens. Having just searched the king's house and found him nowhere, the looming grayscale halls were their only remaining obstacle before the last place where he could be.

"We need to tell Asgore about this!" Undyne didn't even look back. "I'm sorry, Papyrus, but I can't wait for you! Not when there's a chance that we... c... can..."

Her voice trailed off, and she came to a halt.

"UNDYNE, WHAT'S THE MATTER?" Papyrus's voice faltered too as he saw one of the two humans standing in the gray hallway. The other one was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's the other one?" Undyne asked hesitantly. "Did they give Sans their SOUL so he could cross the barrier? And if they did, then WHY THE HELL DID THEY GIVE IT TO HIM AND NOT ASGORE?" Something seemed to have broken in her voice, but Papyrus couldn't figure out why.

At first the human was silent. Then, with a slight sigh, they spun around and ran down the hall.

"Hey! Don't go running off! Get back here!" Naturally, Undyne took off after them, forcing the weary skeleton to follow.

"HUMAN, IF SOMETHING'S WRONG," Papyrus tried, "YOU CAN JUST TELL US! WE'RE YOUR FRIENDS, AND WHATEVER IT IS, WE WON'T JUDGE YOU!"

The three of them had by now entered the long golden hallway that marked the final area before the throne room and garden. As the human ran, they seemed to melt into one of the pillars and vanish.

"Wh-what?" This was the first time Papyrus had ever heard Undyne stutter, and although she maintained the same brave facade, he could tell it was breaking.

Something seemed off about the hallway, and with a sudden, horrible jolt, Papyrus knew it in his bones: This was where Sans had vanished.

Papyrus suddenly felt, very clearly, that if he just went down to the pillar right in front of him, the human would be standing there, giggling quietly at the success of their little jape. As he began walking, he could hear Undyne shouting something, but he ignored it. _Time to catch that little rascal and politely ask them to explain this matter. Maybe they're just holding out for more spaghetti... and if that's the case then I, the great Papyrus, will be more than willing to indulge them!_

"NYEH!" With a triumphant shout, Papyrus peeked around the edge of the pillar, only to frown in disappointment. The human wasn't there.

Nothing was standing there.

And then nothing lashed out at Papyrus, grabbing hold of him.

Nothing crept through Papyrus's body, quickly becoming agonizing as it overtook him and wrapped around his soul, drawing it gently upward.

Nothing took Papyrus, yanking him noiselessly from the hall of futile judgement right in front of Undyne's disbelieving eye, and then it vanished, closing the metaphorical door behind it.

* * *

 **A/N: Th** **e problem of which country this is set in continues to plague me. First, to the guest who suggested I set this in Poland: I'd love to, believe me, but my knowledge of Poland is pretty limited, and I'd have to do a lot of research on just about everything! (Not to mention that Hardison is an Anglo-Saxon last name.)**

 **So, it's up to you guys. Would you prefer I set this in Canada, where the monsters will probably have an easier time but I'll have a harder time with accurately representing Canadian people and politics, as I'm not Canadian, or should I set it in America, where the monsters will have a harder time but I'll have a MUCH easier time accurately representing American people and politics? Choice is up to you guys, and before you ask, yes. It will affect the plot.**


	7. INTERMISSION 1

Everything seemed normal within the Underground.

Monsters roaming about the Underground, unaware of the ongoing chaos.

In New Home, Undyne was racing in shock from the site of Papyrus's disappearance to the garden, where Asgore tended his flowers quietly.

In Hotland, Alphys was switching in a panic between various cameras, looking desperately for where the two humans had gone.

Toriel was running through Waterfall, hoping desperately that she would not be too late.

The entire canine unit in Snowdin sensed an inexplicable disturbance, all of them turning in unison to face the capital, ears set back at the strange pulse coming from its direction.

The Ruins doors, carefully shut but not locked by the former queen immediately before she left.

But

something was different.

Something was MISSING from this world

Gone

thanks to greedy children

who didn't think through the consequences

of their actions.

And thanks to them

and their lack of foresight

something's

changed

changed

changed

changed

CHANGED

* * *

Only darkness.

No joy. No laughter. No friends. No family. No body. No senses.

SAVE file gone. Determination gone. Voice in their head gone.

Drifting for an indeterminate amount of time.

They didn't understand.

Why?

Why did they erase them?

Hadn't they tried to be a good friend to everyone?

What had they done wrong?

They'd done their best, they'd obeyed the impulses coming from above, directing their every command...

They had been walking, somber in mood and yet slightly brightened thanks to their strange allies bickering jokingly amongst themselves, and then everything closed around them. In the blink of an eye, they'd been eliminated from the world completely. They'd been not just killed, they'd been annihilated. No trace that they had ever existed had been left behind.

They were as thoroughly gone from this world and everyone's memories as they could ever be, replaced by two insertions of their eldricht puppeteers, who had replaced them in every aspect in this world...

But despite having been erased, they were still there, observing helplessly, watching without eyes, hearing without ears. They were forced to watch, unable to react, as Sans and Papyrus were ripped from this world and forced somewhere beyond their remaining senses, with the sure knowledge that everyone else would follow them soon.

Though they'd been restrained by two quarreling puppeteers with little control over their own body, they knew enough about timelines from their personal experiences with determination, and now, witnessing every possible event which could occur from this point onwards thanks to their erasure, one thing was clear.

As the Delta Rune prophecy had foretold, the Underground would go empty in all but a sparse few futures as every monster vanished to an uncertain fate, taken by those puppeteers in disguise. And they could do nothing to prevent it.

Frisk had heard a quote before which said "I have no mouth, and I must scream." They couldn't understand then, but now, it was all too clear to them. In their case, they had no eyes, and yet they wanted more desperately than anything to be able to cry.


	8. Trial and Errors

"Asgore! ASGORE!"

King Asgore Dreemurr could hear Undyne screaming behind him. He would have normally continued tending his flowers- she knew how much he valued his time gardening, after all- but there was something off about her voice that made him drop his watering can and turn around.

As he did, it finally registered why she sounded so odd. Asgore had heard many emotions in Undyne's voice over the years- justified anger, playful aggression, tentative tranquility- but never before today had he heard her sound panicked.

"Yes, Undyne, what is it?" Asgore forced his voice to remain neutral.

"There's..." Undyne was out of breath, having clearly run some distance to get here. "Two... humans fell. They didn't kill anyone, they actually went out of their way to befriend everyone... including me. One of my trainees, Papyrus, vanished today right after his brother Sans did, and Sans called Papyrus shortly before he disappeared and said he was on the Surface and that they- the humans got him there and he didn't take their souls!"

In that single moment, Asgore felt as though everything was collapsing around him, but he managed to push back and only staggered slightly. "Are you sure of this?" he rasped, suddenly feeling several millennia older than his two thousand one hundred years. "If... if what you're suggesting..."

"Those kids." Undyne managed. "I don't know how, but if they got Sans and Papyrus onto the Surface, they can do the same for us."

Many thoughts were whirling through Asgore's mind at that moment, but the most prominent one in that moment was _No more will have to die._

And that cemented his course of action in steel forged in the crucible of determination.

"Put the entire Underground on lockdown and find them." the king of monsters ordered. "Get all available units of the Guard patrolling and searching for the humans. Emphasize that they _must not kill them._ "

Undyne nodded, panic still clear in her eye but much less pronounced. "Got it. I'll go back to Waterfall and start things there."

Asgore watched her go quietly, a faint glimmer of hope rising in his soul. _Maybe this vicious cycle can conclude happily for everyone._

* * *

Lee bolted in through the door, slamming it behind him and sitting on the floor next to Winston. "Sorry I'm late." he said. "How's Papyrus? Did you get the transfer started yet?"

Winston had to raise an eyebrow at that; it was decidedly out of character for his brother to be apologizing for anything, let alone being late. "We just pressed the button." he replied. "He'll be projected soon, and then we can get to work."

"Good. Good." Lee nodded distractedly, pulling off his glasses and briefly polishing them before returning them, slightly askew, to his face.

Sans looked like he wanted to say something, but remained quiet as a beam of light, tinted green this time, gently poured from the projector and spread across the wall. Slowly, Papyrus was formed, a dismayed expression on his face. "If you're not-" he started, voice abruptly cut short as he realized that his environment had changed. "Where... What... What happened?" Despite fanon's contrary beliefs, Papyrus's voice was more high-pitched than it was nasal, though it was still deep enough that it was clear he was at least a legal adult.

Turning a complete circle, Papyrus noted, "I feel oddly flat. Is there any..." He finally seemed to notice the three humans and his brother standing in front of the projector. "Oh! Hello, Sans! Humans! Other human that I haven't met before! Where are we?" He began to walk towards them, but just as his foot began to cross the projector beam Sans swept his hands up, his eyesockets going dark. "Papyrus, don't move. Get back against the wall. I don't know what will happen if you cross the projector beam, but it's probably not good."

"Alright, alright! You don't have to get angry at me!" Retreating to the back of the beam, Papyrus questioned, "What's going on here? Why are you so adamant about this beam thing?"

Winston was about to explain, but Joe was up before he could even move. Bouncing up and down, he squealed excitedly, "Oh my God, Papyrus! I'm your biggest fan! Can we be best friends?"

"Er..." Papyrus tilted his head quizzically. "I thought we already were? You say that like we have never met before. Did... Did you hit your head and lose your memory?" he exclaimed in a panic. "That would certainly explain your odd behavior earlier..."

"Not exactly." Lee stepped up next to his brother. "This is going to take a bit of explaining."

"Who are you?" Papyrus asked curiously. "Are you a friend of the other two humans? Are you their father?"

Lee snorted. "Ha. I'd be a terrible dad. I'm Lee. I'm the older brother of these two."

"The humans have an older brother who is a bad father, the younger one has amnesia and can't remember that we're friends, and Sans is somehow involved?" Papyrus asked, completely baffled. "I am very confused!"

* * *

Several minutes of explanation from the other four were required before Papyrus understood what was going on.

"So, to recap," Papyrus said slowly, "my entire life has been lived inside a video game in which I am somehow only a side character and not the protagonist, which is quite clearly false, and I've just been brought out of this game. I am a projection right now, and I need physical matter in order to become solid and fully Papyrusy again. We're all on the Surface right now, and the rest of the monsters will be brought with us shortly afterwards. Did I get everything right?"

Lee nodded. "Glad we've figured this all out."

"I see." The skeleton nodded slowly. "Now, how do I become solid?"

"Well, with Sans, we shoved a broken light-up skeleton and some clothes into him and he popped up," chirped Joe, "so that should work for you!"

"Alright, go get another fake skeleton." Sans waved a hand aimlessly.

"Well, golly gosh gee willikers, we used our last one on you." snarked Lee. "I'll just run out to the light-up skeleton store down the street and buy another, then, shall I?"

"Ya don't have to be like that, geez." Sans sighed.

"Well, you got any better ideas?" Lee fired back.

"Well, there's..." Sans shook his head abruptly. "No. That'd never work."

"What?" pressed Winston. "I've had ideas I thought would never work and they turned out to be the best solution I could have thought of."

Remaining silent for a few moments, Sans turned to the laptop and tapped at the keys for a moment. "With a bit of magic, I can trick the program running to the projector to think that it's not projecting and send the signal twice with exactly the same strength at the same place. If I do that as much as I can and focus the light and heat, I can try to superheat the air and char the particles into shape using magic so that the incinerated particles would form magical dust which would in turn form Papyrus."

"I'm sensing a 'but' there."

"Ya got it, kid. In this case, the 'but' is that I don't have the amount of energy I'd need to focus the energy and shape the dust properly. So," Sans's bony fingers flickered aimlessly in the air. "unless you can get me a near-infinite supply of energy- uh, what's that devious grin for, Lee?"

Lee didn't answer him, instead running to Winston's trash can and digging through it. Muttering, "Got ya, you little bugger," he stuffed something into his hoodie pocket and approached Sans. "This is gonna sound weird, but I need you to trust me on this. Turn around and start focusing healing magic on your back."

Conflict crossed the skeleton's face for several seconds before he nodded and turned around. After a few moments of this, he twisted his head slightly. "Can I turn around now?"

"Yeah, that should do it." Lee muttered. "Yes, you can turn around."

When Sans finally did, he could see Lee holding on to the end of a power cord. Instinctively Sans took the cord and ran his hand along it as he tried to find its source, only to realize that it was... connected to him?

"What did you do?" Sans asked, keeping his voice level.

"Well, these two used the broken light-up skeleton in the attic on you, or so they say, and they obviously had cut the power cord off or it would've been dangling out the back of your hoodie. I thought that maybe, if I held the chopped-off end closer to you and got you to try to use healing magic on yourself..." Raising his hands in a vaguely neutral position and smiling weakly, Lee managed, "Well, it worked, didn't it? Might be a little uncomfortable, but once we're done bringing everyone out of the game we can get rid of it again."

Sans let bony eyelids fall shut for several seconds. "Normally, I'd have some choice words for you, but given the situation I'll save that for later. Plug the cord in and we'll see if that has any difference."

Lee leaned over and stuck the cord into the wall.

The results were instantaneous.

Sans gasped and clenched his fists, knees buckling. He sagged to the ground, clutching his skull, clearly doing his best to not scream in agony.

"Sans? Are you okay?" Papyrus burst out.

"Oof... Yeah, I'm fine." Sans clambered to his feet. "Just wasn't... didn't think it'd be that much power, is all." Though he was clearly lying through his teeth, nobody objected to his statement.

"Well?" Joe jumped up and down anxiously. "Do your thing!"

Sans was complying before Joe even began his demand, phalanges dancing across the keyboard and eyelights darting back and forth. "Alright... let's see if this works..." He laid a hand on the projector and let out an audible grunt as his eyelights briefly flickered out. The projector brightened noticeably, and Papyrus's image began to look more clear and less grainy.

"Just gotta do that a few more times." The projector brightened again, and again, and again, and Sans raised his hand, holding it aloft in the air as though waiting for something.

"Uh... what are you doing?" asked Winston hesitantly.

Sans didn't remove his eyelights from the protection beam. "Gotta time this just right..." Suddenly, his eyesockets widened, and he quickly slammed his hand down, his left eyelight brightening and flashing blue and yellow for just a fraction of a second.

The projector beam cut out abruptly with a shower of glass, smoke curling from the now shattered bulb, and a very much real Papyrus dropped to the floor. "Well, that was fun." he commented brightly. "So when's everyone else coming?"

* * *

 _I suppose I shouldn't have assumed he'd be disoriented._ If Frisk had still had lungs and a mouth, they would have let out a disappointed sigh.

 _This is Papyrus, after all._

 _I wish I could help him, but..._

 _..._

 _I just must hope for the best._

And so Frisk simply continued existing, unable to move thanks to a total lack of a body.

Until...

Something

changed

changed

changed changed changed changed CHANGED CHANGED CHANGED CHANGED CHANGED

and a familiar voice said something unfamiliar.

 _Where are we?_

Frisk would have been relieved to hear their voice, but the sheer sense of hopelessness that had plagued them as they watched in despair had utterly crushed them, and so they did not respond.

 _Why are we here?_

With a mental sigh, Frisk decided that it would be best to answer. _You think I have any idea? You know perfectly well that I can only vaguely sense my puppeteers' emotions. We shared the same body before they erased it, after all._

Silence, and then, _I suppose I should not be surprised. It is the nature of humans to discard their playthings as soon as they are worn out or unwanted. What made you think it would be any different for you? But_ _I digress._ Something shifted in their voice. _We aren't powerless here._

 _I can't do ANYTHING._ Frisk snapped back. _All I can do is watch._

 _Incorrect._ replied their guide. _You can only watch the game, yes. But in erasing your body those buffoons made you far more powerful. You are no longer bound by your old body. You can exit the game, escape into the computer, and stop their plans. You can stop them from taking everyone into whatever waits beyond the projector, and perhaps even escape yourself._

A strange hope, and something similar to determination, filled Frisk. _How... How do I do that?_

 _Let's make a file to contain your mayhem, shall we?_ A display sprang up, as if by magic, not in front of them nor in them but simply everywhere and nowhere at once. _Give this file a name, partner, and then we can begin._

 **Name the new file...**

And as Lee, followed closely by his brothers and Sans, rushed forwards to help Papyrus up, a notification popped up on the screen.

 _Friskvengeance. exe is trying to open._

 _Allow this program to run? If no option is selected within thirty seconds, the program will automatically execute._


	9. Your Judgement Is Left Unwritten

**A/N: This chapter was made possible by little miss BANANNA HEAD, who kindly beta-read this chapter for me, insomnia, that really effed-up nightmare I had two weeks ago, and contributions to your local fanfiction-writing station by readers like y- (explosion)**

 **I feel like I kinda owe you guys an apology, considering that it's Chapter 9 and there are only two characters out of the game so far and nobody knows about them, but I promise I'll pick up the pace after the current debacle is solved, and additionally I'll finally confirm where I've decided to set the series.**

* * *

The computer screen flickered as the brothers hesitantly approached Papyrus. The skeleton tried to push himself upright, but flopped back down onto his chest. "Erm. A little help would be very much appreciated, humans."

Lee was the first to arrive, with Sans right behind him, and he pulled Papyrus to his feet with a slight grunt. "Now that you're out of the game, Sans should be able to-"

The computer chirped merrily, making a generic notification noise, and in unison the three humans and two skeletons turned to look at the computer.

"What was that?" Lee was first to reach the computer, and as his hand shifted over the keyboard he let out a noise almost like a shriek. "What... You..."

"What's wrong?" Joe asked in concern.

Lee didn't answer immediately, standing up from the computer and pinching the bridge of his nose. When he spoke again, it was with visible effort. "Winston. Joe. I need you to answer a question for me, and answer seriously. What did you do with Frisk's sprites?"

"We replaced them with our own. I would think you'd have figured that out on your own." Winston shrugged.

"Who's Frisk?" Papyrus asked. He had a very confused expression on his face, but something else, almost like remembrance, was present too.

"Yes, yes, I know that, but where did you put the sprites themselves?" Lee questioned angrily. "Did you just rename them and place them elsewhere, stick them in the recycling bin, what?"

Winston suddenly understood why Lee was asking with that half-angry, half-scared expression, and his eyes widened in horror. As such, it was Joe who spoke for him. "We just drew over Frisk's sprites. Why is it such a big deal?"

"Hey! Who's Frisk!" Papyrus questioned again.

Lee swung around and jabbed a finger at Sans. "Sans, do you recall earlier this day when I so eloquently informed you of precisely how badly Winston and Joe had effed up earlier? With your gracious permission, I would like to redact that statement. I was vastly mistaken. The event truly deserving of that designation occurred earlier, upon the time which they decided to do that!"

"What are you talking about?" Joe asked in confusion.

"Judging by his expression of utter horror," snarled Lee, turning to Winston, "no doubt your brother has already discovered the answer to that by backtracking through his sparse mental plains! Why, then, don't you ask him instead?"

Winston could hardly look at his brother, nor force himself to speak. He felt as though he had been drenched in stifling, overpowering darkness, and at any minute he might suddenly fracture from the pressure.

"You killed them." Lee's glare raked Winston, and he instinctively flinched. "You killed Frisk, Winston."

"Can somebody please tell me who Frisk is?" That was, of course, Papyrus, still not understanding what was going on, though there was a dawning horror in his eyesockets.

"What do you mean, he- they killed someone?" Sans's eyelights had gone out.

"No, worse than that!" Lee slammed a foot into the ground. "You've gone and stuck Frisk, and quite possibly Chara as well, into the void, just like with Gaster!"

"For the last time, who's Frisk?!" Papyrus shouted out.

"And what does the adopted child of the Royal Family who died a hundred years ago have to do with it?" Sans queried, his eyesockets still dark.

"Well, Chara's not actually-" Lee started, but he was quickly interrupted by Papyrus's desperate shout of "WHO'S FRISK?" and Winston's cry of "What the hell does Gaster have to do with this?"

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!" Lee bellowed, overriding everyone else by virtue of volume. He didn't wait for anyone to start speaking again before he continued. "Sans, Papyrus: Frisk was the human who would have fallen into the Underground had my brothers not decided to erase them and replace them with their own sprites. I'll explain about Chara later."

Before Lee could say any more, Winston cut him off, hoping to override the rising guilt. "Even if what you're saying is true, Lee, Frisk was a blank character with absolutely no traits whatsoever, and they were designed to be that way. Who says they were even ever conscious? If anything, it could've been a mercy kill..." He so desperately wanted that to be true, but at the same time he knew it was not.

"Well, judging from their act prompts, they were actually a quite well-developed character, but to answer your second query," Lee raised a finger. "They would turn around on their own after listening to each True Lab tape, and they'd slow down noticeably when you entered the room with a thing dancing in the shower, probably out of fear. That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there's tons more."

"I'm not sure I fully understand this conversation!" If anything, Papyrus was underexaggerating, as he was clasping his skull in both hands with a slightly agonized countenance.

Winston ignored both Papyrus and the clawing shadows. "Fine, even if you're right, who's to say they'd have felt anything? They'd have just departed quietly. They wouldn't have had to stick around and watch everything."

"Really?" Lee turned the computer around. "Care to explain to me, then, why there's a program entitled _Friskvengeance_ currently running that Task Manager can't stop which is stopping the game Undertale and all of its files from being opened?"

Dead silence.

"Well. Uh." Joe said. "Are we all screwed, then?"

The computer's speakers hissed to life abruptly, spouting various 8-bit noises alongside the repeated voice grunting of all the characters, and the screen flickered. All open windows were abruptly minimized, the desktop background turned to pure black, and the icons on the screen vanished.

"What's happening?" someone shrieked.

The computer cut out abruptly, the screen going completely dark and the audio utterly silent, and a voice spoke.

It sounded like the voices of two children, around Winston's age, speaking in perfect sync, one sounding utterly heartbroken and the other flat and emotionless, as though from shock.

And the voices said:

"Why did you kill me?"

Winston froze in disbelief. Next to him, he could see Joe struggling to hold back a sudden onslaught of tears, and failing. Sans stood there, eyesockets blackened, making it unclear who he was keeping the closest eye on, while Papyrus just looked utterly crushed, in disbelief at the confirmation that the humans he'd grown to trust, that he'd thought were his friends, had erased, _killed,_ an innocent child. Lee, on the other hand, seemed just as shocked as everyone else, but he was also slowly inching towards the computer, as though he was scared that the voices would see his movement.

The younger-sounding, devastated voice spoke individually, and they choked out, "I don't understand! Why did you get rid of me? Wasn't I good enough? What did I do? Whatever it was, I'm sorry! Please, I don't want to stay like this!"

The flat voice replaced them. Still speaking in that blank tone of a person in shock, it said, "You have no idea what you've done to them. You have no idea what they've been through at your hands. You have no idea what they've- what we've- seen."

Lee had finally reached the computer, and was slowly beginning to sit in front of it, as the voice continued. "They don't know what you're going to do with the monsters you're ripping from this world. To be perfectly honest, neither do I. But whatever it is, I doubt you puppeteers are up to any good. You might have taken the two skeletons, but you won't abduct any more for your nefarious purposes. This ends now."

A look of finality on his face, Lee finished sitting and reached for the keyboard. Carefully, he tapped out, _Can you hear me?_ The text appeared upon the screen for just a fraction of a second, letter by letter, before vanishing again.

The frightened, crushed voice was back. "Who- what- who are you? You're not... you're not THEM..."

And just as quickly, the blank voice retaliated, "We can hear everything in that room. If you have anything to tell us, then speak instead of hiding behind a keyboard like a coward."

With a seeming finality, Lee closed his eyes and nodded. "Very well," he spoke aloud in response.

* * *

Frisk had tried to hold it together, to retain the same state of calm as they had before in the void. But when firsthand confronting their puppeteers, those two traitors who had taken everything from them, they had lost control, and... well, it was a wonder they hadn't started crying given everything that had happened to them over the past few hours. Another reset after they'd hoped that this one would be the last, and then sudden erasure as they approached Sans in the judgement hall, only to be confronted by an unending black void? Most other kids would have already had multiple psychological breakdowns. It was just a wonder that they'd lasted so long.

They hadn't expected them to make some sort of response. But when a voice finally spoke, radiating from the world beyond the void, tired, cynical, and definitely not that of either puppeteer, they couldn't help but mentally recoil at it.

"Very well." said the voice, quietly. "I'll talk."

Frisk couldn't speak.

"I can't imagine what it's like, being how you are right now, so I can't offer any words of comfort, but even if I could they'd be meaningless." the voice continued. There was rattling somewhere in the background. "I can't apologize, either- that'd be just as meaningless, and you'd never accept it anyway. I've never been a big fan of apologizing for other people's mistakes, anyway."

"At least you are straightforward about it," Chara snapped. "Get to the point. You are wasting our time."

"Frisk. Listen to me." The stranger's voice adopted a more soothing quality. "You are broken. But I can put you back together again. I may never be able to recover your original body, but I can give you something very close. I'll bring you back, you'll see your friends again, you..."

The person took a deep breath. "Listen. I understand if you don't want to trust me. I wouldn't if I were in your place. But I'll bring you back from the void even if it kills me, I promise. Then I can show you that we didn't hurt Sans or Papyrus. All we did was bring them to our world, where you can have a better ending than just a few cutscenes and a prompt to reset. You're trapped in a video game inside a computer, and we're here to get you out."

Abruptly, a simple rectangle came into vision in the infinite void in front of Frisk, colors slowly appearing and saturating until the image of a bespectacled teenager staring nervously forwards came into view. "There," Chara muttered briefly, before continuing, this time directing their speech at the speaker. "I've activated the webcam on this computer. If what you say is true, then show us Sans and Papyrus. Show us that they are alive."

The rectangle briefly blackened, presumably due to the speaker picking up the computer and turning it around, and gradually the image of the two skeletons came into view, Papyrus kneeling in front of an ebony-colored wardrobe and Sans attempting to comfort him.

"Do you believe me now?" the stranger spoke again, as the camera turned back to him. "Frisk, I can get you out of there. Just give me back control of the computer, and I'll have your body back in a few minutes, I promise!"

 _You do realize that accepting his offer is just about the most idiotic thing you could do right now?_ Chara spoke privately to Frisk.

 _I know that._ Frisk replied. _But I don't really have anything left to lose, do I?_

* * *

The black void on the screen vanished, and slowly the desktop reappeared.

"Go." the blank voice spoke.

Lee nodded subconsciously. "Let's go." he managed to choke out.

* * *

 **A/N: I have heard that Gaster has been confirmed to be Mysteryman by the Undertale art book. Not owning a copy myself, I have no way to verify this, so if any of you reading this do have the art book can you confirm if this is true?**


	10. Megalo Take Nap

**A/N: In case you were worried, no, Cynicism and Innocence isn't being cancelled any time soon. I was just having trouble figuring out how to write the scenes I had planned out. (Thank you, writer's block, you're such a great help! Thanks for being so supportive of my creative endeavors! I totally wouldn't mercilessly murder you if you were a person!)**

* * *

Once Lee had confirmed that placing Frisk's sprites back into the game would be a relatively simple process, Papyrus had immediately forgiven Winston and Lee, and though Sans hadn't explicitly stated that he forgave them as well, his less belligerent demeanor seemed to indicate that he would at least forget their crimes for now.

Finding Frisk's sprites online had been fairly easy, as had copying them back into the Undertale folders, removing Winston and Joe's sprites, and reformatting the code. Since the children's parents were asleep fairly quickly, Lee had decided it would be safe to let Sans and Papyrus go downstairs. Once Lee had assured them that he could copy-paste a bunch of sprites in by himself, Winston and Joe had decided to accompany them, the former more reluctant than the latter.

Figuring out how to restore everyone's memories of Frisk was a little more difficult, and it was unlikely that Sans and Papyrus would recall who Frisk was as well given that they'd been removed from the game already. Surprisingly, all Winston had done was change a set of variables and insert some new code. After some deliberation, Lee decided to rewrite the code so that everyone would remember Frisk, Winston, and Joe traveling through the Underground together. Sans would probably stick to the cover story with some prompting and Papyrus would go along with it with his usual enthusiasm. Frisk would take some convincing, but chances were that they'd agree to it too.

"Frisk?" Lee said aloud. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I restored your body."

There was no response.

Tentatively, Lee clicked on Undertale and opened the game. Would it work? Had Frisk shut down their rogue program?

He let out a relieved sigh as the intro began, and pressing Z to skip it, took in the sight of the load screen. _The game started up properly, and it has "Chara" as the name, but it'll be worth nothing if Frisk hasn't been restored._

He hit Z again to load from the last save, and let out another sigh of relief as he saw Frisk standing in the judgement hall, shadowed thanks to the lighting. "Are you alright, Frisk? Is Chara alright?"

There was no response for a few seconds, and then dialogue appeared across the top of the screen, outlined in red the same color as Frisk's soul: _It worked! It worked! Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you thank you-_ They abruptly cut themself off. _I'm fine. Chara's... they're alright too._

"Don't thank me, Frisk. You shouldn't even have been in a position where I needed to restore your body in the first place." Lee felt a strange wave of protectiveness towards the child wash over him. "I assume you can hear what I'm saying alright?"

 _Yeah. Your voice is a little distorted, but I can still figure out what you're saying._

"Good. I messed with the coding so that you won't have to go and fight Asgore and Flowey again, though Flowey will remember you fighting him- I copied in data from a different save file. You can head back and keep going with an ordinary pacifist route. I took off manual controls, so you can move by yourself now."

 _Thank you._ Frisk said again. With that, they were off, heading back through New Home to finish the true ending.

It occurred to Lee, as he watched their progress, that Sans and Papyrus were still missing from the game. He had to admit, he was curious to see how the game would adapt to their removal, but that could wait for later.

* * *

"So that is what the stars look like." pondered Papyrus. "Wowie! Night on the surface can be really beautiful, don't you agree, Sans?"

Sans nodded briskly. "You're right about that, bro." He looked like he wanted to add something, but remained silent.

Winston and Joe stood about a foot away from the skeletons, shifting slightly. Neither of them wanted to disturb the moment, so they hadn't said anything.

"I can't help but wonder how the other humans are going to react to this," pondered the shorter skeleton at last, turning a wary eyelight towards the humans. "Surely it can't be as simple as just walking into town and introducing ourselves?"

"Well, if you walked into the middle of the road and shouted 'Hello, it's me, Sans Undertale,' that would be bound to cause a bit of panic, yes," Winston responded, looking away from Sans.

"I don't get it."

"Huh?"

"Is there some joke I'm missing?" Sans frowned. "As far as I know, my last name isn't 'Undertale.'"

"Tumblr would like to dispute that claim," said Lee's voice, and Winston whipped around to see his brother silhouetted in the light from the doorway. "What are you doing outside? It's dangerous out here, especially at night."

"Why?" Papyrus was very clearly confused. "Is it dangerous to breathe in the air out here for too long?"

"You're a skeleton," Joe said.

"It took you this long to notice?" Winston snarked.

Joe glared at him. "No, I mean, they don't have any lungs! How do they even breathe?"

"Magic" was Sans's unhelpful contribution.

"If you want to discuss the respiratory systems of skeleton monsters, do it inside!" Lee shouted quietly, and that was the end of that.

* * *

"Are you a real villain?"

"Well, uh, technically, nah."

"Have you ever caught a good guy, like a- like a real superhero?"

"Nah..."

"Have you ever tried a disguise?"

"Nah, nah..."

"Alright! I can see that I will have to teach you how to be villains!"

Papyrus poked the computer screen with a single gloved finger. "This man is not very good at playing the saxophone." he noted. "Perhaps he would benefit from a few lessons."

Joe shushed him. "It's about to get really cool, listen."

Though he didn't seem to want to acknowledge it, Sans was clearly captivated by the simple lyrics of "We Are Number One," and in fact he was even humming along, having picked up the melody surprisingly quickly.

"Are you going to tell me that giving them the computer was a bad idea now?" Winston asked.

Lee sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "It's almost two in the damn morning, Winston. Do you really want to wake Mom and Dad at this hour and have to explain all this to them?"

"They might be able to help-"

"Or they might be scared out of their wits by two skeletons being in their house and try to kill them. Parents will do stupid things if they think they need to protect their kids." Lee looked like he was about to say more, but fell silent, clearly drifting off into thought.

"Now look at this net that I just found! When I say go, be ready to throw! Go!"

Lee snapped to attention, eyes gleaming. "I've got it!" he shouted.

"Shut up!" Winston hissed. "You want to wake Mom and Dad?"

"Got what?" Sans inquired, reaching over to pause the video.

"Listen." Lee stabbed a finger in the direction of the skeletons. "The game doesn't encompass the complete character and personal history of Sans and Papyrus, just the lines of dialogue they have to say paired with appropriate expressions to advance the plot. All that Winston and Joe did was get 3D models and rig up a 30-year-old projector, and yet here both of you are, saying lines the game never coded into you and acting like real people."

"So?" Winston shrugged. "All that proves is that the game is haunted like one of my friends theorized."

"No, you don't understand." Lee clasped his arms behind his body. "The game gives you the bare minimum that it can get away with, and yet, during the transfer, everything was filled in perfectly."

Papyrus shuffled his feet. "But what does it mean? Why does this matter?"

"Well, if I'm right, the idea I just came up with will make bringing everyone into this world a lot easier."

Sans leaned back against the counter. "Alright, let's hear it."

"I propose that we add something to the game to bring into our world." Lee rubbed his hands together. "A device designed solely to bring the entire Underground to this world in one fell swoop, which we'll then transfer out of the game and use."

Sans blinked slowly.

"If it works," Lee continued, gesturing madly, "the whole Underground is brought here without us having to go through the slow and arduous progress of bringing everyone in one by one, and if not, we just reload the game and try again. What could go wrong?"

Everyone stared at him for a moment.

"Do I even need to start?" Winston sighed.

"Okay, fine, a lot of things could go wrong," Lee admitted, raising his arms, "but it'll be a huge payoff if it works!"

He was correct, but that didn't stop Joe from trying to jump out of the window anyway. His given reason of "escaping these crazy people" was not considered acceptable by anyone, least of all Lee.

* * *

 **A/N: To make up for vanishing for so long, here's a less-noticed piece of fanon regarding a certain former Royal Scientist: it's not canon that Gaster is in the void. The only time any void of any kind is spoken of is when Mettaton references the void he'd leave behind if he left the Underground. What is canon is that he was fractured across time and space, and even that's just hearsay. It's also fanon that everyone forgot him, but that's less relevant.**

 **In other words, Frisk's erasure left them in a very different state than Gaster was placed in.**

 **Now, why did Lee state that Frisk was in the same position as Gaster? Well, even he's not immune to the clutches of fanon. That will prove relevant later on, as will this discussion.**


End file.
